Sculpture or Food? Stylist Chris Yuille’s Charismatic Culinary Creations Are Both

Before he was a food stylist, Chris Yuille wanted to be one of Australia’s great chefs. In his twenties, he worked at Gerard’s Bistro in Brisbane, where he grew up, then moved to Melbourne and did stints at two of the city’s top restaurants: fine diner Amaru and Andrew McConnell’s Hot Listed Cutler. 

“I got a little demoralised with the lifestyle, and my life priorities changed a bit,” he says. “I reached a point where I wanted to see what else was out there.”

He left fine dining and was working as a cafe chef when a friend working at South Melbourne homewares store Made In Japan asked him to cook a few dishes for a Christmas campaign. “I think I made a quiche, it was pretty basic,” he says.

It was a pivotal moment – the shoot introduced Yuille to the world of food styling for the first time. 

“The photographer told me, ‘Hey, this is a job. It’s called food styling, and you’re kind of good at it. You could do this’.” Yuille recalls. He went home, googled Melbourne food stylists and cold-emailed a few of them offering to assist on shoots. Kirsty Bryson and Caroline Velik responded and brought him on to assist. 

In 2020 he landed a job on the food team at Masterchef Australia (the team that prepares the food for the challenges and pressure tests) before moving to the creative team, where he felt “like a kid in a candy store”. The role involved art directing, developing challenges and helping with the selection of guest chefs.

But it was Yuille’s work with Flamingo Estate, Richard Christiansen’s Los Angeles-based lifestyle brand, which brought a new level of renown beginning in 2023. Flamingo Estate is known for its imaginative, garden-inspired products – think tomato-scented soaps and candles, olive oil and honey collaborations with celebrities including Julianne Moore and LeBron James. Yuille’s entree to the brand came via prominent stylist and art director Stephanie Stamatis. “I was lucky enough to get the call-up because Stephanie’s regular collaborator – and a mutual friend, Meryl Batlle – happened to be unavailable. Lucky me!” 

“It’s a brand that allows full creativity,” Yuille says. It’s also been the perfect platform for his signature retro-leaning aspics and jellies.  

Yuille created his most recognisable piece of work about two years ago, when Flamingo Estate tasked him with finding something creative to do with balsamic vinegar. His creation, with its base of pea and olive oil mousse topped with an assemblage of green beans and asparagus spears, all set in a balsamic and chicken consommé jelly, could have been a piece of contemporary sculpture. The inspiration came in a “frenzy in the middle of the night”. Which is how it often happens, he says. It’s also, “a combination of what you’ve got lying around”. 

Working with Flamingo Estate has “completely changed the trajectory” of Yuille’s career, he says, and provided the space to develop his creative practice. 

“The majority of [food styling] work is for large food brands: fast food, supermarkets, food service. You’re typically working with existing products and trying to make them look better, which is a really fun process,” he says. “But I’m really grateful to be in a whole new world now, where it’s not just about working with something that already exists to make it look better, but to bring your own ideas and creative vision.”

His style typically features retro foods like black forest cakes and crudité boards, with sculptural shapes that result in arrangements that walk the line between food and art. “I’m not as prop-heavy as a lot of stylists. I tend to lean into the more cheffy, minimal sort of aesthetic. Rather than images being about plates and bowls, it’s about what I’ve actually made with food.”

It’s the interplay of familiar comfort foods with sharp composition, rich texture and a sense of the surreal that makes Yuille stand out.

An image Yuille styled for Yumbo Soda features a four-tired pyramid with layers constructed of sunset-hued citrus cubes. For skincare and beauty brand Summer Fridays, he assembled a triangular slice of glossy pecan pie, placed on its side, with a brown eyeliner pencil leaning against the golden crust and, on its opposite side, a swirly avalanche of aerated whipped cream. Dinosaur Designs, Mud Australia, Loco Love Chocolate and Pidapipo have all enlisted his services.

“There is definitely a trend in vintage right now, but straight vintage is kind of boring, because we’ve seen it. For me, it’s trying to take that emotion and have a spin on it,” he says. “Something that I try to always channel in my work is contrast. So, it’s old but new. A lot of the jelly that I make is taking that vintage vibe, but then making it super geometric, or shooting it on stainless steel or with an austere colour grade. I think that’s when it becomes compelling.” 

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